Rosslare Europort
Rosslare Europort (Irish: Calafort Ros Láir) is a modern seaport located at Rosslare Harbour in County Wexford, Ireland, near the southeastern-most point of Ireland, handling passenger and freight ferries to and from Wales and France.
The port, formerly called Rosslare Harbour, is operated by Iarnród Éireann, Ireland's national railway operator, which provides trains between Dublin Connolly and Rosslare Europort railway station, in the port (5 minutes walk from the Terminal Building), some timed to connect to/from ferries to Wales and France.[1]
SailRail
The Rosslare Harbour/Europort ferry connection using Stena Line to Fishguard Harbour and then by train operated by Arriva Trains Wales to Carmarthen, Swansea and Cardiff linking into First Great Western to Bristol Parkway, Reading and London Paddington. This is popular with Rugby fans going to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff or Lansdowne Road in Dublin. Train and ferry connections across the Irish Sea are promoted as an alternative to air.
Irish Rail and Ferry Connections
Trains connect the port on the Rosslare Line via Wexford, Enniscorthy, Arklow, Wicklow, Bray to Dublin Connolly.
Onward rail connecting trains from Dublin Connolly link with the Sligo Line with Mullingar, Longford and Sligo and the Belfast Line to Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry, Portadown, Lisburn and Belfast Central.
| Preceding station |  Iarnród Éireann |
Following station | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosslare Strand | InterCity Dublin-Rosslare Line |
Terminus | ||
| Terminus | Stena Line Ferry |
Fishguard Harbour | ||
| Terminus | Irish Ferries Ferry |
Pembroke Dock | ||
| Terminus | Irish Ferries Ferry |
Cherbourg Maritime | ||
| Terminus | Stena Line Ferry |
Cherbourg Maritime | ||
| Disused railways | ||||
| Rosslare Strand | InterCity Limerick-Rosslare Line |
Terminus | ||
Details
The harbour has four berths.[2] Passenger ferries operate to and from Fishguard (Stena Line) and Pembroke Dock (Irish Ferries) in Wales, and to Cherbourg and Roscoff in France.
An all-weather RNLI lifeboat is on station, and the Irish Coast Guard helicopter at Waterford Airport provides air-sea rescue cover.[3][4]
An automatic weather station is maintained adjacent to the port by Met Éireann.[5]
The Europort is the only Irish seaport with experience of offshore windfarm construction. Components of the wind turbines for Arklow Bank windfarm were shipped into Rosslare, assembed in the Europort, and shipped out to the windfarm site where they were installed and commissioned.
The port also receives ships importing new cars into the country. The importer depot is in Rosslare Harbour Village.
The port area is largely on reclaimed land. Reclamation work continued to the late 1990s, when the northwest part of the port was constructed using a dragline. Modernisation of facilities has continued to encourage the increase in cars carried on the ferries despite a drop in foot passengers.
Facilities in the terminal building include a café cum shop, ferry company desks, car rental and self-service left-luggage lockers. Railway services to Wexford and Dublin Connolly are located at new platform. Bus services to Wexford, Dublin, Cork, and Waterford leave from just outside. Bus and rail connections to Cork, County Kerry, and Limerick, and bus connections to County Clare & Galway are available from Waterford.
At Rosslare, Iarnród Éireann is an infrastructure provider and operator, providing port facilities and related services, including stevedoring, to shipping lines. Rosslare Europort is operated as a Common User Terminal, meaning that the port authority carries out all stevedoring activities on a common user basis for all shipping lines using the port.
Rosslare has also handled rolltrailer traffic in the recent past, when Cobelfret operated a service from Rosslare to Zeebrugge/Rotterdam (October 2008 to September 2009). Rolltrailers enable the carriage of lift-on lift-off (LoLo) traffic on roll-on roll-off (RoRo) ships.
Rosslare Europort is the second most strategically important seaport in the State after Dublin. It is the second-busiest port in terms of ship visits & gross tonnage, and handles more unitised freight than any other Irish seaport except Dublin – in fact Rosslare handles more unitised freight than all other seaports in the State, excluding Dublin, put together. Unitised freight is important because all of the high added-value exports on which Ireland's economic recovery depends are exported as unitised freight.
Rosslare's location at the southeastern corner of the island is also a strategically significant factor. Counties Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Tipperary South, Waterford, Wexford & Wicklow, with a combined population of 925,000 are all within 90 minutes of Rosslare. Also easily drivable are Dublin (pop 1,270,603), Cork (pop 518,128) & Limerick (pop 128,491); thus a population of 2.7m or 58% of the population of the State are within 2½ hours of the Europort.
Rosslare Europort is well connected to the national roads network:
• M11/N11 & M1 to Dublin & the North
• N24 & 25 to Cork, Limerick, etc. (Atlantic Corridor)
• N80 to the Midlands & the West and via the M9 to Southwest Dublin
Rosslare is also rail-connected, and IE plan rail freight services when the Europort breaks into the LoLo sector.
Rosslare Europort is also strategically important to the Southeast Region, being by far the biggest port in the region, accounting for over 55% of all freight traffic through the region’s seaports, and over 80% of the strategically important unitised traffic. Rosslare Europort is the only passenger seaport in the Southeast Region (906,050 passengers in 2011), and makes a far greater contribution to national and regional tourism than the only Airport, Waterford Airport, (77,465 passengers in 2011).
Key economic sectors dependent on Rosslare Europort include:
• Food & beverage (beef, lamb, dairy, beer, cider, whiskey, soft drink concentrates, bottled water, etc.)
• ICT (information and communications technology)
• Pharmaceuticals & life sciences
• Construction supplies
• Light engineering (e.g. agricultural equipment)
It has been estimated that the overall economic contribution of ferry-based tourism through Rosslare Europort was €543M in 2004, with an estimated net overall employment impact of 5,130 full-time equivalent jobs.
See also
Coordinates: 52°15′20″N 6°20′04″W / 52.25556°N 6.33444°W
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rosslare Harbour. |
References
External links
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